Stranger Than Fiction

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

This delightful realistic fairy tale plays with the idea that art imitates life, and shows how life is influenced by art. It also depicts how, in the face of life’s struggles that eventually lead to death, people are saved in a variety of ways. The movie does an excellent job of balancing serious issues with humorous moments and dialogue, as it explores the shifting line between tragedy and comedy.

The film begins with a woman circling want ads and a boy receiving a bicycle as a gift. Then there is Emma Thompson’s voice saying what follows is a story about Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) and his wristwatch, which the camera zooms in on after the shot moves from outer space to Harold’s apartment, suggesting how larger forces interact with an individual’s life. Thompson (in another wonderful performance) is Kay Eiffel, a writer, so it is appropriate that she is telling a story. This performance is my favorite Ferrell role. He has stuck to comic, often silly, movies, but here he shows that he has range and can bridge the area between comedy and drama with underplayed acting.

Eiffel says Harold “was a man of infinite numbers.” He spoke little since mathematics, not words, ruled his life. The narrator notes that Harold brushed his teeth each day seventy-six times, thirty-eight in one direction and thirty-eight in another. For twelve years he tied a single knot in his tie to save time compared to a double knot, but his wristwatch (which has anthropomorphic attributes in this tale) thought it made his neck look fat, “but said nothing,” silence being what is expected of a watch. The implication here is that although human, Harold is likened to a mechanism, while his watch, an object, is like a person.  Harold also ran to catch his bus, with an apple in his mouth, at the same rate each workday. When he ran, his watch would “delight” in the wind “rushing over its face,” demonstrating that at this point it, ironically, has more emotion than the person who is wearing the timepiece. The film’s visuals display numbers on the screen throughout the movie to stress the arithmetic that Harold has allowed to determine his world. 

Harold is a senior agent at the Internal Revenue Service, a place that primarily deals with numbers, and he reviewed the exact same number of cases each day. He is like Rain Man in his ability to calculate sums as his co-workers test him (and interestingly, Dustin Hoffman is in this movie). He would take exactly 45.7 minutes for lunch, as his life is parceled down to fractions of time. His wristwatch lets him know exactly when to perform each action, showing Harold dwells in the safety of a numbers-driven technological environment. His life is as inhuman as his calculations, devoid of social interaction, since he walked, ate, and slept alone. The narrator says that, “on Wednesday, Harold’s wristwatch changed everything.” It’s as if Harold’s regimented life might be subverted by his underlying need for the personal touch.

For stories to be interesting, there must be twists. But, it is not only the change in his watch that supposedly alters the story. Harold now hears Eiffel’s voice announcing his every measured move, and he confusedly calls out to whoever is saying what he is doing. Fiction and reality here become one in this story within a story (but we are watching a movie so the overall structure is fictional). The Voice says that ironically Harold’s numbers-based existence “would become the catalyst for an entirely new life.” It’s as if hearing this omniscient narrator alerts Harold that he is about to embark on a different way of living.

Because the Voice makes him conscious of his automatic activities, Harold changes his movements as he reflectively observes himself, and the numerical pictorial graphics crash to the street as he slows his usual pace, showing how he is now capable of breaking free of his routines by becoming self-aware. Of course his initial reaction is one of confusion and fear. He no longer can concentrate on his work because of the intrusive narrator. He believes he is “being followed” by a woman’s voice. He is standing in an isolated, sterile white filing room at the office, reflecting on the barrenness of his world, and for that matter, every person’s life that is dominated by boring routine. He tells his co-worker, Dave (Tony Hale), to listen to the Voice (which Dave can’t hear) as he places a folder into a box. The narrator likens the sound of the interaction of the two objects as “a wave scraping against sand.” The Voice says that for Harold the sound could signify “what he imagined to be a deep and endless ocean,” which Harold confesses he actually felt. Here, art, in this case the story, lends poetic language and insight into the endless repetition of the Groundhog Day life many people live. 

A female co-worker approaches the two men and robotically drops off the new audits. In a monotone she says, “have a good day.” This small incident shows that Harold is not alone in his humanity-denying existence. He takes the baker, Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhal in a great performance), to investigate (the screenwriter, Zach Helm, noted that he used the names of mathematicians for his characters to mirror Harold’s life and those living worker bee lives). Ana is a tattooed woman who is dynamic in her actions and speech compared to the stiff Harold. She slams dough around her work area as she curses the “taxman,” with others in the eatery joining in on the scorn (because, let’s face it, even if you grant it’s necessity, nobody likes taxes). She admits to deliberately paying only seventy-eight percent of her taxes, because although she supports using funds for certain government programs, she does not approve of excessive spending on defense programs, “corporate bailouts and campaign discretionary funds.” She included a letter with her tax return addressed to the “Imperialist swine.” He asks if she belongs to an anarchist group, which she comically points out that would be a contradiction in terms. 

The Voice intervenes, saying that Harold, although not prone to fantasies (ironic, since this story is one) can’t help but be sexually aroused by the passionate baker (a profession that stresses satisfying physical appetites. But, “pascal” suggests Easter, which deals with resurrection, hinting at the woman’s effect on Harold). She tells him that he is staring at her breasts, and he tries to cover up his carnal observation by saying if he was doing what she said, “it was only as a representative of the United States Government.” It’s as if he is trying to convince himself that he can only allow himself to be interested in her in an official capacity. He can’t continue and says he will return.

Outside, Harold uncharacteristically yells at the Voice to “Shut up!” His automaton facade is breaking down. He looks up at the sky as he screams, as if cursing God as the camera pulls back upward away from him. The next counterpointal shot is from high up on a building rooftop as Harold’s God looks down on the people below. It is Eiffel, the writer whose voice Harold was hearing, and who supposedly has the fate of her characters in her hands. She waves her hand above some people below, which is followed by a man with a hose diverted by a boy on a bike (remember him from the first shot?), and the man accidentally sprays a woman (the one at the beginning looking for a job in the newspaper). Random people become connected by God, or in the case of a story, the writer, (and here the screenwriter who makes the writer a character, too) an artist, who like a divinity, has the power to create. 

The writer appears to jump off the roof. But that is a fiction, as she contemplates her own imagined actions, and is really waving her hands while in her apartment while standing on a desk. Penny Escher (Queen Latiffah) comes in and asks if she is Miss Eiffel, a name that shows how she towers above her subjects, but, given her imaginary jump, also implies the precariousness of her position as she struggles with the writing that in her case points to how she, too, feels powerless over the direction of her story. Eiffel says she was doing research standing on her desk (where she writes) imagining a demise from a jump from a building. Penny was sent by the publisher to be a secretarial assistant. But Kay Eiffel sees her as a spy because the publisher believes she has writer’s block. The author doesn’t want to admit to the stunted storytelling, and with a straight face won’t admit that her chain smoking is due to her anguish, saying humorously the cigarettes came “pre-smoked.” She asks Penny what she thinks about jumping off a building. She wants to explore the depths of human nature, and dismisses the idea that Penny doesn’t think about those negative things, only wanting to feel happy. Eiffel says everyone has thought about the nature of suicide. Eiffel would want to argue against those who only want art to divert, and people to be in denial about the darker aspects of what it is to be human. Eiffel says that she saw a picture where a person leaped off a building, and her face looked serene in death. Eiffel thinks it’s because the jumper enjoyed the wind rushing past her face (the way she described what Harold’s wristwatch felt, its mechanical face having the sensation of a human face. Maybe Eiffel is suggesting even a person living like a machine can enjoy life’s sensations, even if it must coincide with the death of the robot-like body).

Eiffel believes Penny was sent because, “I don’t know how to kill Harold Crick.” All God’s children have to die, but it is still disconcerting, even in a story, to hear that causing an individual’s death is premeditated. In the human realm, that act is called murder. Eiffel is antagonistic toward Penny as she struggles with her plot. Penny says she has helped twenty authors complete thirty-five books, and “never missed a deadline.” So, despite Eiffel’s dismissal of her ability to help, Penny says she can contribute to the solving of the writer’s problem. It appears at this point, Penny is only there to help Eiffel meet her contractual obligation.

At work, Harold receives an email, not very personal, from Dr. Cayly (Tom Hulce) to report to Human Resources. Cayly, sporting a New Age look with necklaces and appearing like a phony latter-day hippie, says he had a “convo” with a fellow employee who said Harold was acting “wibbly-wobbly.” Cayly wonders if Harold is experiencing “cubicle fever.” Harold sits in a chair in front of a large phony backdrop depicting the sky with clouds. It probably is meant to make a person entrapped in one of those cubicles feel like the worker is outside. But Harold may feel like his head is starting to soar above the mundane, as the clouds appear to be moving behind him, despite his denial that anything is “wrong” with him that would prevent his ability to perform his bureaucratic duties. The Voice calls Cayly an idiot as the man talks about “trees” being trees. Harold can’t dispel the smell of brownies from the bakery and the seductive nature of Ms. Pascal. Cayly tells Harold he should take an overdue vacation, which turns out to be good advice.

While on the street, the Voice says that Harold’s watch was acting up, and Harold never paid attention to it except to find out the time, which, according to the Voice, drove the watch “crazy.” Again, the instrument takes on human characteristics, as the machine apparently has more of a will than does Harold at this point. The Voice says that the watch then stopped, and would become an instrument of “fate” leading to Harold’s death. When Harold hears about his impending demise, he uncharacteristically yells out alarmed questions about this prediction among startled people waiting for the bus. He goes back to his apartment calling for answers as he duplicates the circumstances when he first heard the Voice, ritualistically brushing his teeth. But the communication is only one-way, from writer to character. Since Eiffel is unsure as to how to do away with Harold, no further information is forthcoming. In a frustrated frenzy, Harold becomes his own narrator, describing how he is shaking a lamp around, smashing it to the floor, and kicking it. In a sense he has taken charge of his actions in a sort of emancipation. He continues to narrate as he trashes his place. He addresses himself in the third person, like he is now the author, and describes himself as “distraught,” a human emotion he has not allowed himself to experience.

Harold sees a psychiatrist, Dr. Mittag-Leffler (Linda Hunt), who says what he is describing is schizophrenia. He disagrees because with that condition, a voice tells the person to do something. But the Voice Harold hears describes what he has already done, or is doing, “accurately and with a better vocabulary” than he would be able to produce. Harold correctly says that the female Voice talks about him like he is “a character in my own life.” The problem is the Voice comes and goes, so he does not have access to the whole tale, and needs that information to prevent his death. He doesn’t want medication and asks if what he is hearing, even if it is in his own mind, is a story about himself, then what would be her advice. She says to go see someone who knows literature, which Harold thinks is a good idea. 

Now is where Hoffman’s character, Professor Jules Hilbert, appears, and he says it is “dramatic irony” that the narrator won’t say how long Harold has to live. So, we have been presented with real life, fiction and its interaction with reality, and now we have a literary critic to analyze this combination. Hoffman is very funny as his character delivers rapid lines without inflection as he performs other actions, including brushing his teeth or giving swimming lessons. He asks insightful questions, such as the number of steps they climbed, or the number of ceiling tiles in the bathroom, noticing Harold was counting. The professor has made an accurate conclusion about Harold’s mathematical obsessive-compulsive disorder. Hilbert wants to know if Harold was ever married, finding out that the taxman was engaged to a fellow auditor who left him for an actuary. Hoffman comically comments on the blandness of the life of numbers by saying, “How heartbreaking.” He finds out Harold lives alone and has no pets, which points to his socially vacant life. Hilbert discovers it is an unfamiliar woman’s voice doing the narration, and that Harold is worried about her death prediction since she was right about how he disliked his job. At first Hilbert dismisses his ability to help since he is a literature person and Harold’s story doesn’t sound very literary. But when Harold says that the Voice said to him, “Little did he know ...” Hilbert becomes interested since that phrase is a literary convention, and he says he wrote papers on “little did he know,” and taught classes on it. (Being a person who attended graduate school as an English major, I can attest that is the kind of overly scholastic statement a professor would say). His conclusion is that Harold doesn’t know what is happening which moves his story away from a purely psychological problem to the professor’s area of expertise. Hilbert is here to help, but like Penny, it is not yet personal for him, since he asks Harold to come back on Friday, but then remembers the man’s death may be “imminent,” so he might be dead soon, and Hilbert doesn’t want to miss out on this intellectual project. He wants Harold to show up the next morning.

The Voice announces the arrival of Ana on the bus on which Harold is riding just as he is questioning his way of life. She wants to avoid him, but the rocky ride places her in a chair near him. He apologizes for “ogling her,” and she accepts his being sorry for his poor manners. He jokes now, a departure for him, because of her rebellious ways, asking if she is going to a flag-burning event. She returns the humor saying she was going to her “weekly evil-conspiracy and needlepoint group.” He continues the funny exchange by saying he can’t join her because he left his “thimbles and socialist reading material at home.” Ana laughs and the Voice says that Harold didn’t want to ruin the meeting by making a fool of himself, probably being aware of his social inexperience, and left the bus many blocks before his stop. 

Harold visits the professor as arranged. The scholar has several questions from a literary stance about the Voice, and again Hilbert does not seem considerate of Harold’s feelings. His questions imply that Harold lives in a world of fiction, asking him if he has received any gifts, like a wooden horse, referencing The Iliad. He wants to know if Harold is the king of anything, and makes references to trolls. Harold, who is having a fantasy experience, still finds the questions ludicrous since otherwise his life is excruciatingly ordinary. Hilbert then ventures into other narrative elements, asking if Harold was ever made of “stone, wood, lye, varied corpse parts,” the latter referring to Frankenstein. The professor says he is attempting to find out what kind of story Harold is in, and he has ruled out much of Greek literature, several fairy tales, Chinese fables, and that Harold is not Miss Marple, Scout Finch, or a “golem.” The professor believes Harold should be relieved that he is not one of the latter. Hilbert seems outlandish, but so is Harold’s predicament.

Meanwhile, Eiffel is out in the pouring rain with Penny as the writer imagines herself driving and going off a bridge to her death after avoiding that child on that same bicycle. She is taking what she has physically perceived and is attempting to transform those impressions into part of her story. Ironically, the opposite is true, since her fiction has manifested itself into Harold’s actual life simply by calling her character Harold Crick. Penny says that many people die from pneumonia by exposing themselves to inclement weather, voicing her disdain for being outside in the storm. Eiffel’s attention is only drawn to how she might give Harold pneumonia instead of worrying about her own health. Her immersion into her tale has removed her from being part of reality, just like the characters in a book. Penny now is showing more concern for the writer than her work by bringing her nicotine patches to help (that word again) her quit smoking. Eiffel is not interested in nicotine patches for her own well-being, as she notes she is not “in the business of saving lives” in her writing, but just “the opposite.” Her fiction mirrors her outlook on life, at least at this point.

The movie shifts back to the professor asking Harold questions. Harold’s favorite word is “integer,” which is funny, sad, and appropriate. Harold confesses to only wanting one thing more out of his life, which is to play the guitar. So, there is this seed of whimsy and artistry hidden inside his tamped down personality. Hilbert says they must determine if he is in a “comedy or a tragedy.” He says literature has the opposing elements of continuity of life and the inevitability of death. He says (and these are standard elements of the two forms) in comedies the protagonists get married in order to produce offspring, and in tragedy the main character dies. Hilbert points out that in comedies, the romantic interest enters and initially hates the protagonist. Harold tells Hilbert that he met Ana who despised him. Hilbert says it sounds like the making of a comedy, and Harold should develop that, as if he is giving an assignment to a creative writing student. Only Harold’s story is taking place in reality (although not really, because, yes, it is a movie). The film here is investigating, within a fictional story, the conventions on which it is based, reflecting on the world of art which it is a part of. But, it also is stepping outside the traditional narrative structure by satirizing standard storytelling by commenting on it. 

Harold tabulates what interactions with Ana seem like they fit under the comedy and tragedy headings. She says she is paying only what she believes she owes, and he tries to make a joke by saying he needs to know the amount of her delinquency to determine the “size of her cell.” The remake doesn’t go over well, so he gets down to business, trying to make sense of her mess of tax files. Her messy life and the eccentric customers in her bakery contrast with Harold’s mathematically precise mindset. 

At the end of the day auditing Ana’s sloppy records, the bakery is closed and she offers Harold a cookie. He says he doesn’t like them, which is like admitting he does not sensually indulge himself in anything. His mother didn’t bake and he only ate store-bought cookies as a child. Despite her animosity for Harold’s job, she shows compassion for him, helping him (the movie’s primary theme), and offers him a chance to enjoy himself. Acting maternal and nurturing toward him, she gives Harold milk with his cookie and tells him to dip it. He deeply enjoys the new experience. He asks when she decided to be a baker, and it happened while she was a student at Harvard Law School, which one would not have thought she attended. She dropped out and says she barely was admitted, mainly because of her essay about wanting to make the world a better place (more helpfulness). She still seems committed to that enterprise based on her resistance to certain government spending noted earlier. There are also postings on the bulletin board in the bakery about various humanitarian causes. Her good will efforts took the shape of her baking during late night study sessions with classmates, and that is how she found her calling. She made students happy, which improved their grades. She developed a following and decided in order to make the world a better place she would “do it with cookies.” As she lists the types of desserts she began to make, Harold looks aroused as the desires for satisfying appetites appear to stimulate him and bring him to life. She wants to give him cookies to take home, but he reverts to his rule-dominated stance by noting the offer would be a gift and it would compromise him if it came to light. She says that she wouldn’t tell anyone, but he says he should purchase the desserts. Because she feels she didn’t touch his humanity and he didn’t trust her, she becomes upset and tells him to leave. He realizes that she specifically baked the cookies for him, and was just being nice. He says he “blew it,” and after seeing all the tallied strokes on the negative side of his ledger, he concludes he is in a “tragedy.”

Back with Professor Hilbert, Harold says he has failed with Ana and in his attempts at making his story a comedy. Hilbert says it appears that Harold is driving the plot as he acts and the Voice responds to his actions. Hilbert, again commenting on the writing process we are actually experiencing as we view the story, says plots move forward either by external forces or by the behavior of characters. Harold’s story seems to be dependent on his actions, so Hilbert says do nothing, which will prevent his demise. Hilbert is starting to try to help Harold as a person, not a make-believe creation.

Harold tries to stay on his couch the next day, as he watches documentaries on animals being preyed upon or captured, which mirrors his fears about what is happening to him. He doesn’t even answer his phone. But as he watches his television, a huge crane bashes through the wall of his apartment. He yells at the demolition men, who accidentally were at the wrong address. Back with Hilbert, the professor, analyzing storytelling as usual, says “meeting with an insurance agent the day your policy runs out is coincidence. Getting a letter from the emperor saying he’s visiting is plot. Having your apartment eaten by a wrecking ball is something else entirely.” He concludes that Harold does not control his ultimate “fate,” and Harold also has come to the same sobering belief. 

As they continue their discussion outside the classroom, Hilbert says the narrator may very well kill him, so he should just live his life by having an adventure, or just “finish reading Crime and Punishment,” (I know I have thought I didn’t want to die before reading a special book), or eating “pancakes.” Harold is outraged that he should use the remainder of his life by just eating pancakes, but Hilbert is funny but insightful when he says that it depends on the life being led and the “quality of the pancakes.” If Harold’s life has been so unsatisfying, the consumption of good food may be the way to go. Harold says that what is happening is not philosophy or a story about him, it’s his life. Hilbert says he should then make his life the one he always wanted. Hilbert shows real concern for Harold’s status here. Actually, Hilbert’s remarks fit everyone, since we all are mortal, and we should ask ourselves what do we do to maximize the time we have? 

Harold crashes at his friend Dave’s place, since his own apartment has been literally crashed. Dave’s apartment looks like someone into Space Age technology decorated it. He, too, seems to want to break out of his dreary adult life by accessing the imagination of the child within him. That is why Dave says that if he knew he was going to die soon, he would go to Space Camp. His friend’s bucket list choice seems to inspire Harold. While brushing his teeth Harold defiantly changes the manner of his dental routine, trying to take matters into his own hands. He goes into a music store as the Voice notes how Harold counts all the instruments and their parts, showing how difficult it is for him to break his cold, mathematical preoccupation. He said before he always wanted to play the guitar, but the Voice says Harold seemed to only be able to “stand” there without doing anything. The Voice says that Harold had trouble finding a guitar that “spoke” to him, meeting his needs. The Voice is comical as she notes several funny lines the various guitars may be saying, including one with two long necks that said it was “compensating” for something else. The narrator says Harold spotted the one that called to him, a mistreated instrument (like Harold?) that still “spoke with conviction and swagger,” characteristics Harold possibly wished to exhibit. It said to Harold, “I rock,” while Harold in his life just let things roll over him.

 Eiffel is with Penny in a hospital emergency room looking for ways people might die. They observe a man being treated for a gunshot wound. The author is still trying to determine how to end Harold’s life, but the victim here was in a gang fight, and his situation doesn’t fit Harold’s non-gang member status. There is a man there staring at the patients, and Eiffel says he just likes to look at sick people. Penny humorously observes that Eiffel made her comment “oddly with disdain,” since that is exactly what the writer is doing. Eiffel says they are in the wrong place and need to see people who are lost causes. She tells a nurse that it’s fine that the people there are sick and suffering, but she needs to observe the terminal. The woman asks if Eiffel is afflicted with something, and she responds, “only writer’s block.” We laugh at her response, but she is detached from the world she is supposed to be channeling in her writing, and in that distancing she mirrors Harold and Hilbert, although the latter two are showing some emotional growth. 

The Voice says that with every “strum” of his guitar Harold “became stronger in who he was, what he wanted and why he was alive.” His music, a form or artistic expression (as is literature and film) adds human dimension to Harold’s soul. He now cohabited with Dave, so he was no longer alone, and ate his meals with his friend. He didn’t count brushstrokes while cleaning his teeth, or steps to a bus stop, and didn’t wear neckties (a form of bondage when you think about it). The impact of art is stressed as Harold goes to the movies (he views Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, appropriate for what Harold is going through) and did what song lyrics advocated, as he “lived his life.” There is a quick shot of Harold rising in an elevator, a metaphor for his ascending spirit.

But the narrator points out that “Harold’s journey was still incomplete.” Harold visits Ana, and he brings her “flours,” in numerous bags, not flowers, which would be the typical romantic gesture, since she is, after all, a baker. He tells her flat out that he “wants” her, and he really hasn’t said that to anyone before, expressing his needs. He now doesn’t care about breaking any rules that would prohibit such a relationship, and in that sense, he is connecting with her rebellious nature. 

She asks him to bring his gift up to her place. She makes him dinner (appetites being satisfied again), and he tells humorous stories about his encounters in his job. She has a guitar, but doesn’t play. He says he knows only one song, and she wants him to play it. His old instincts make him refuse at first, but he overcomes the resistance to let go of restraints, and plays. He sings “Go the Whole Wide World,” which urges a search for that special girl. She is won over, and passionately kisses him. She now says she “wants” him, too, and they make love.

Harold visits Hilbert and says triumphantly that he is in a comedy since the woman who initially hated him is now falling in love with him. Hilbert says that’s wonderful but it invalidates a list of seven living authors who could be writing his story given the tragic course his plot was following. In a coincidence (whose elements Hilbert described earlier), a contrived one here, Kay Eiffel, a favorite Hilbert writer, is being interviewed on the TV in the professor’s office. Harold realizes that it is Eiffel’s voice he is hearing, and the book she is writing, appropriately titled Death and Taxes, fits Harold’s situation. It is about, she says, not being able to connect with life and the “looming certainty of death.” When he tells Hilbert hers is the Voice, he is upset because she wasn’t on his list as the interview is ten years old, and she has not published anything lately and became a recluse. He taught a class on her writings, and he has tried to find her. He says she kills all of her heroes. Harold goes off to track her down through her publisher.

Eiffel is out getting cigarettes (a way of killing herself off, too?), and she notices a grocer spilling some apples, one of which rolls into the street, which reminds us of how Harold would chew on an apple on his way to catch his bus. She comes back to her apartment and tells Penny she knows how to kill Harold. She believes her way will be “ironic” and “possibly heartbreaking.” 

Meanwhile Harold is kicked out of the publishing house. But, he uses the IRS computer system (which, let’s face it, is one inclusive database) to acquire Eiffel’s phone number. She is now narrating Harold’s stifled attempts to make a call as the phones are down at his office and Dave can’t get a signal on his cell to help him. An old man is hogging the pay phone on the street. Harold goes into the subway and dials Eiffel’s number, and as she types “the phone rang,” Eiffel’s phone does in fact ring out. Eiffel is intrigued because every time she writes that the phone rings, hers does. She answers and Harold says who he is, tells her he knows she is writing about him, and even quotes passages he heard. Even though Eiffel is creating this tale, she thought it was all in her imagination. This revelation freaks Eiffel out. (There seems to be a flaw in the film here, since in Eiffel’s story, her version of Harold Crick doesn’t know about a writer composing his life; so then, why is she narrating about him trying to make a call to the writer narrating his actions?).

Harold shows up at Eiffel’s place, and Penny introduces herself as the writer’s assistant. Harold humorously returns the courtesy by saying his name and adds he is Eiffel’s main character. Eiffel is overcome by the fact that he appears exactly as she pictured him for her book. A writer wants to precisely envision his or her characters, but not to the point of actually conjuring them up. The implication is that people need to have the escape hatch of being able to separate fiction from reality. He points out that “the little did he know” line, which he accurately describes as “third person omniscient,” revealed that someone other than Harold was telling the story. He mentions Hilbert, and she knows him from his letters to her. He tells her that now that they met, she should realize that she can’t kill him. She falters, and Harold asks, horrified, if she has already written his demise. Eiffel is being forced to actually engage with someone on a real life and death basis instead of removing herself from the real effects of what happens to people, and which she only described before. She says she had written a rough outline on the bus on her way back from her cigarette run, but it wasn’t typed yet. So Harold’s fate is caught in a sort of transition stage. Penny, being sympathetic toward Harold, says he should be able to read what she wrote. Later, Harold provides a humorous and sad comment concerning his plight when he says, “I may already be dead, just not typed.” He was already dead spiritually until recently, but the typing of his actual demise is like the carrying out of the actual death sentence.

Harold visits Hilbert, explains the situation, says he can’t read how the story might end, and asks him to read it to advise him. Hilbert reads the story as we see a shot of that boy on the bike, which we know will play a part in some kind of accident. Hilbert offers his apologies but says the novel is brilliant, Eiffel’s masterpiece, and it won’t be great unless Harold dies in the end. He is arguing the importance of the transcendence of great art over the life of one person. He says that Harold will eventually die anyway, and another routine loss of life “won’t be nearly as poetic or meaningful as what she’s written.” Hilbert says that is what tragedy is because “a hero dies but the story lives on forever.” But there’s a huge difference between pretending about the eventuality of a death and actually causing one. 

Harold keeps riding a bus as he reads Eiffel’s story, being carried along by the narrative as the bus carries him around, as a passenger, because he is not the driver of the book or the vehicle. Penny enters Eiffel’s apartment and finds objects littered about. Eiffel is stretched out on her desk, like a corpse on a morgue slab, asking Penny about how many people she has killed off. She has killed eight people, and now wonders why every book she wrote concludes with a death, adding the characters were nice people. After he finished reading the story Harold returns the manuscript to Eiffel who is on the street. He tells her the writing is beautiful and it can only end one way to be great, as Hilbert had said. He seems resigned to endure the sacrifice. 

The Voice says that Harold concluded some unfinished business the night before his death. He visited Ana and she cooked for him, they watched some old movies, and they said they “adore” each other. He gives her a way of deducting all the food she gives away so she won’t owe taxes. She says she wants to make a point by breaking the law. He counters with he also wants to make the world better which means keeping her out of jail. The movie suggests true salvation comes from helping each other.

Harold picks up his human-like watch and leaves Ana in the morning. He gets dressed for work knowing what is supposed to happen. The boy who rides the bike awakes to his alarm clock. Harold handles an apple in his damaged apartment, and we, and he, know that piece of fruit will be there at his death. The Voice notes how things had changed for Harold over the past weeks. He thought he was not late for his bus on this day that he was to return to work. But he did not realize that when he asked for the time a month earlier, the person erred by noting the time was three minutes later than the actual time. Dependence on a set schedule to live your life can’t save one from harm because there are always outside forces to be reckoned with. If Harold had been on time, he wouldn’t have been at the stop when the boy falls off his bike and Harold wouldn’t have needed to go into the street to help the child. But he is there, and he unselfishly, yes, “helps” the boy. A bus then comes by and smacks into Harold as the apple rolls on the street (is the apple symbolic of the loss of innocence and expulsion from Eden?). Eiffel is a nervous wreck, racked with guilt, as she can’t light her cigarette and smacks the top of her desk on which her typewriter sits. 

Eiffel shows up at Hilbert’s office. She hands over her manuscript and says he may be interested in the new ending. Harold is not dead. He is badly injured, and in bandages in a hospital bed. Through the window of the hospital room is a large clock in a building, reminding us of how he used to live by what a timepiece displayed. Despite his fractures and head injury, a shard of metal from his watch obstructed a severed artery that kept the blood loss to a minimum, allowing him to live. The shard can’t be removed so it will remain in his arm. Is this a compromise of living with time but not letting it control us, becoming a tool, but not a self-torture device?

Ana shows up at the hospital and she kisses Harold, thankful he is still alive. He says he didn’t have a choice; he had to save the boy. The thrust here is that self-sacrifice should triumph over one’s desire for personal well-being. Back in Hilbert’s office, the professor reads the revision. Eiffel looks down from the window as she did previously on the rooftop, but she no longer waves her hand like an omnipotent god. He says the story is now only okay, because the ending doesn’t fit with the rest of the book. She says she’s fine with “okay.” She says she will rewrite the rest to fit the new ending. He asks why did she change the ending. She said it was a story about a man who doesn’t know he’s about to die and then dies. But, if he has that knowledge, and dies willingly, knowing he can stop it, then, she says, “Isn’t that the type of man you want to keep alive?” Eiffel has evolved from reflecting her pointless philosophy of life to accepting that we are all saved each day in some way. The title of her book is Death and Taxes, referring to the quote from Benjamin Franklin noting that these two things can’t be avoided. However, at least temporarily, Harold has given Ana a way to avoid paying her owed taxes, and he has escaped an early death.

Using the Voice, she now writes about her new attitude in the new book ending. She says that as Harold ate a cookie (something I find worth living for) he knew things were going to be okay. Eiffel says, “Sometimes when we lose ourselves in fear and despair in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies.” Or, she says we find salvation in someone touching a hand, or a “kind gesture.” There is then a shot of Dave receiving an envelope from Harold enrolling him in Space Camp. There is the “Subtle encouragement,” of another as Penny puts some patches on Eiffel’s typewriter to urge her to quit smoking. There is also the healing of “a loving embrace,” as the relieved father hugs his bike-riding son who is uninjured. And, the writer adds, there are other small things that make life better, even “maybe the occasional piece of fiction.” Her conclusion is that these small things are here to help and save our lives. And in this story, a wristwatch saved Harold Crick. So, the story of life can be a comedy, not a tragedy.

Next time, there will be short reviews of some recent films.